I forced my tone to stay casual. “That’s how you knew about things like this rust concoction?”
“Exactly. My truth serum is only scraping the surface of what I can deal out, little girl.”
I bristled automatically, but I held my tongue. She was trying to unnerve me, to get me to snap. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.
In my silence, she stepped closer again, stomping her foot hard enough to send a vibration through the platform. “As I said before, you shouldn’t be here. We’ve already established that the railings don’t hold, haven’t we?”
If she wanted to intimidate me into running scared, it wasn’t going to work. I held my position. “I actually like it up here.” Sunlight danced on my skin, and the clean, fresh air filled my lungs. I didn’t feel as caged as I did inside.
That was why I liked parkour too. Apart from the fact that I was naturally good at it, I could shut my mind off completely when I climbed and bounded, letting my body work on autopilot.
Anthea cocked her head with a knowing look I didn’t like at all. “No, it isn’t the sky you’re afraid of but what lies beneath the ground, isn’t it? No one likes being shut away inside a space they can’t escape from.” Her gaze dropped to my hands.
My arms froze at my sides. “What are you talking about?” Flashes of memory from years ago, images I had buried deep inside me threatened to cloud my vision. The rotting scent, the sting in my fingertips, my throat hoarse from screaming.
“You okay?” Anthea said innocently. “You look a little pale there.”
She couldn’t know. She was just taking whatever jabs she could. “I’m fine,” I bit out.
“I suppose we’ll see about that.” She turned back to the window she’d come out through. “Well, this has been an enlightening conversation. Let me enlighten you a little more. The last person who really pissed me off was my former husband. Former because he’s three years dead. And that’s not a coincidence.”
She shot one last smirk over her shoulder at me. “Wouldn’t it be a horrible pity if somehow you ended up meeting the same fate?”